Inventory control can be a significant challenge for some manufacturers and distributors. For example, if a company makes or distributes a large number of high cost items, a significant amount of expense can be incurred to manufacture or purchase an inventory of the items. To attempt to limit such expenses, companies use demand forecasting to estimate how many of each item should be on hand. For high demand items, relatively straightforward statistical analysis of historical demand can be used to generate an estimate of future demand. However, historical demand data for items that have very intermittent demand may not provide enough data points for reliable statistical analysis. For some industries, many items are both expensive to manufacture or stock and have highly intermittent demand. To illustrate, some device components rarely need replacement, but are expensive if and when they do. For example, some aircraft components, such as main landing gear struts, rarely need to be replaced; however, these components can be quite expensive. Further, customers of manufacturers or distributors of highly intermittent demand items can be significantly inconvenienced if a needed part is not available. To illustrate, continuing the example above, if an aircraft is not able to operate due to the need for a replacement main landing gear strut, an airline that owns and operates the aircraft can incur significant costs as a result of the aircraft being inoperable.